


I Dreamed We Were Broken

by MintSauce



Series: The Halfway House [27]
Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: AND au, Canon, M/M, sorry - Freeform, weird as hell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-25
Updated: 2015-05-06
Packaged: 2018-03-25 18:13:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3820075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MintSauce/pseuds/MintSauce
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ian helps himself, but not maybe in the way you'd think.</p><p>SECOND CHAPTER NOW ADDED!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So this is kind of weird, but it's inspired by my best friend and a quote she sent me that was: 
> 
> 'I hope  
> that if alternate universes exist,  
> it will still be you  
> and me  
> in the end. I hope that  
> there will always be an us.  
> In every world,  
> in every story.' - Tina Tran 'Let us always find each other'

“Dreams are imagination,” Monica whispered to Ian once, when he was old enough to remember, but young enough not to feel the weight of it quite yet. “And where imagination lives, anything is possible.”

Ian didn’t think too much of it for a long time, but he thinks about it now.

He thinks about it when he opens his eyes in a world that he knows isn’t his own. He can see the darkness, the yet to be created twisting at the edges. He can taste the unfamiliarity of the air on his tongue.

He doesn’t freak out though. He knows not to.

Mickey isn’t here, but he’s looking through a window at a reflection that’s looking back. The Ian he’s staring at has hair that’s different though, longer, messier. He looks tired, cheekbones sharp and eyes sunken in. He looks like he’s seen all the horrors of everything and it is everything he can do not to close his eyes.

His reflection is younger than he is, probably just shy of nineteen if he’s right about his own face. His reflection isn’t a reflection though, he can tell.

It’s a him, another him, so Ian doesn’t resist the pull. He moves towards himself through the door of the diner that he doesn’t recognise and places his hands on the Other Ian’s shoulders. “Breathe,” he says to him and the Other Ian does.

The Other Ian’s breath rattles and his fingers twitch and Ian knows what he wants, what he’s craving. So he reaches into his pocket and he hands over one of the cigarettes from the packet he stole from Mickey.

With smoke in his lungs, the Other Ian relaxes, eyes not leaving Ian’s face.

“Who are you?” he asks and Ian assumes he doesn’t remember Monica’s conversation or maybe he just never had it. Who knows what happens in other worlds and other times. Or maybe he has had it, but it doesn’t mean the same, he doesn’t feel the same weight settling in his chest.

Ian knows this is possible because this is his imagination. Dream or not, it’s not his waking world and so he’s happy to run with this. He’s happy to see how this goes and where it takes him.

“You, I’m assuming,” he says, shoulders shrugging. He doesn’t take the smoke when Ian offers, he’s cut down almost to the point of quitting by now. “Maybe not exactly, but close enough.”

“How is that possible?” the Other Ian asks, he looks a little frantic. His hands are shaking around his cigarette. How can a person look so tired? Why is he not sleeping? Ian wants the answers, but he doesn’t quite know how to ask.

He doesn’t know this boy-him, even if at the same time he does.

“Does it matter?” he asks. “There’ll be a reason, no doubt. I say let’s just roll with it.”

That’s how it always works best in the movies that Mickey makes him watch. Someone gets thrust into an unfamiliar place, they fight it and shit goes wrong, they let it happen and everything works itself out in the end.

The Other Ian shrugs, but he looks too tired to argue.

“Why haven’t you been sleeping?” he asks, unable to resist. It feels like a pretty innocent question anyway.

The Other Ian sighs, rubs his eyes and stares at the ground. He looks embarrassed, but Ian watches him decide (or maybe it’s realise) that he doesn’t have to be. “The pills make it hard,” Ian says. “You know how it is. They make me sleepy when I’m awake. Keep me awake when I’m sleepy.”

Ian frowns slightly, watching the Other Ian watch the people wander past. They don’t spare them a glance and Ian doesn’t recognise their faces, he wonders if the Other Ian does.

“What pills?” he asks. “What do you take pills for?”

The Other Ian looks up at him sharply. “You’re not bi-polar?”

Ian blinks. “Like Monica?” he shakes his head. “No.”

The Other Ian scoffs, spits on the ground and tosses the cigarette aside even though he wasn’t finished. His hands are still shaking, but he drags them through his hair. He looks like the world is falling down around him. He looks like he thinks he’s the butt of some great cosmic joke and he probably feels like he is too.

“Lucky you,” he grinds out. “Because I am apparently. Just. Like. Monica.”

His lips curls and he spits again. Ian wants to comfort him, but he doesn’t know how so he just goes for the truth of it.

“It doesn’t make you Monica,” he says. “Why would it?”

The Other Ian turns his head and his eyes are so dark and so cold. He looks broken. Ian doesn’t know how to piece him back together because Ian has never had the pieces for himself, Mickey’s always had them.

He’s starting to realise how dangerous that could turn out to be.

“They all say it does.”

“Who?”

“Fiona. Lip...” he trails off like he’s going to say something else, but stops himself.

Ian ignores the pause at the end and laughs before he can stop himself. “Well that doesn’t surprise me,” he says honestly. “I haven’t spoken to Fiona in years. Lip’s only now mending bridges.”

“Why?” the Other Ian asks. He looks like he can both imagine it and yet can’t at all.

“They think they know me, that they know what’s best for me. They only know what they want to be my truth though.”

The Other Ian breathes out slow. He looks a little more broken, shoulders hunching in on himself. “They were right this time though,” he says in a low voice. “I am just like Monica. Gay, bi-polar, crazy, toxic, broken…”

His voice cracks on the last word.

“Doesn’t sound like you’re broken,” Ian says. “Sounds like you’re just not pieced together quite right yet. Took me a few years to get it right. And you’re the only one who gets to decide if you’re like Monica.” He shrugs. “You want to be crazy, be crazy. You can’t help the gay or bi-polar bit, but you can take your meds and you can tell the world to go fuck itself. You can learn to find the pieces you’re missing.”

The Other Ian’s quiet and he looks so small underneath all his floppy hair. It makes Ian want to take him inside the diner and feed him.

Ian puts a hand on the back of his neck, squeezes. He remembers watching an episode of Doctor Who once, curled up on the couch with Mickey and thinks about how if this was Doctor Who, that touch probably would have ended everything.

“How am I supposed to do that?” he asks.

“You find what makes you happy and you put faith in it,” Ian says.

He thinks of the feeling he got when he saw Mickey standing under that tree, key held out like an offering and eyes sorry and tired. A piece had slotted back into place then. Maybe not the main piece, but one just important enough to show him what the picture could be.

He thinks that’s what this Ian just needs to find. He needs to find a clue for the picture and then he’ll be able to work the rest out from there.

“And if I broke what made me happy too?” the Other Ian asks. “If I broke the faith that that person had in me?”

Not for the first time, Ian wonders if there’s a Mickey here in this world.

“If it’s meant to be, it finds its way back regardless,” he says. “You deserve to be happy, even if you don’t think you do. You deserve the end game, the finale to make all the other ones meaningless.”

“Just because you deserve the end game doesn’t mean I do,” the Other Ian points out.

“Tell me your story then,” Ian says. “Let me judge it.”

So Ian takes a breath and he does.

He tells him about growing up with Frank and Monica, of growing up with Fiona scraping together everything she could to make ends meet. He tells him about the Kash and Grab, about Kash and a dirty boy who bursts in and has Ian brandishing a tire iron and flinging himself into a love story that he didn’t think he could ever want to end.

He tells him about break-ups and Juvie visits, of murder plots and tears. He tells him of Russian whores and rape and of forced marriages and a kick to the face.

He tells him about the army, about the clubs and the drugs and the feeling of breaking and drowning and splintering into someone you don’t recognise even slightly. He tells him about the tiny moment of good in all that darkness, of hands lifting him up out of the snow and carrying him home.

He tells him of the good bits that follow, the highs of being manic but the joy that comes with it because bi-polar or not, breaking or not he was still young and in love. He tells him about being crazy with it, with the feeling building in his chest.

He tells him of grand comings out, of bar fights and laughter and love, so much love he’s splitting with it.

He tells him of crashing down. Of not being able to move. Of drowning again, but in a worse way.

He tells him of clawing back out of that. He tells him of a little family, a whore, a baby and two broken boys. He tells him what happiness feels like in those moments, of what it feels like to be told you’re crazy.

He tells him about broken trust, on both sides. Of stealing a baby. Of hospital and drugs.

He tells him of _sorry I’m late._

Of _suck it harder, you faggot_.

Of _we’re going on a date_.

And he tells him of everything feeling like it’s sliding into place, pills and love and everything finally put together again. And he tells him of the army again, of listening to words that break you and hurt you and dig down deep underneath your soul.

He tells him of running again, of not recognising himself, not wanting to be Monica but not wanting to be who other people are making him be either.

He tells him of, _this is it? This is you breaking up with me._

He tells him of the feeling of it, of the emptiness stretching inside of him and that small voice screaming. He tells him of not regretting it until later, tells him of dialling and dialling and hanging up before anyone can answer.

He tells him that it’s better this way.

This Other Ian, this broken Ian tells him that he’s better off alone, because he can’t hurt _him_ this way. He can’t hurt Mickey, because Ian knows it’s Mickey.

It’s always Mickey.

So Ian says, “He left once, you know.”

And the Other Ian’s head jerks up where he’s staring down at his shoes and he looks startled and like he’s dreading the answer when he asks, “Who?”

“You know who,” he says.

“Did he come back?” the Other Ian asks. It’s not clear what answer he thinks will hurt less.

Ian fingers the key ring, old and scuffed, but still attached to his house key after all these years. “He’s Mickey,” he says. “And I’m Ian. We’re always going to be pulled back together. He’ll always come back to me.”

The Other Ian looks destroyed by Ian’s words. He throws himself forwards and away, like physically distancing himself will be all that’s necessary.

“Well then lucky you,” he spits. “But we’re not you, I think that’s obvious.”

He looks disappointed and that says everything.

“Do you know what I think?” Ian asks. “I think we’re more alike than you think.”

“How?” the Other Ian yells, incredulous. “Mickey and I aren’t together. We’re not like you. We’re not _meant to be_ or whatever.”

He’s red in the face now and it’s weird, watching the anger spread across his face from the other side of it.

He coughs out a short laugh, half at what he’s seeing and half at what the Other Ian is saying. “I don’t think you believe that,” he says calmly. “And do you know why? Because I asked for your story and you just told me yours with Mickey. You ended it when you ended. So what does that tell you?”

The Other Ian’s jaw works, mouth opening and closing like a fish. He looks put out and sad, but hopeful too for the first time since Ian’s met him.

“Gallagher!”

They both whip around and Ian’s heart lurches up into his chest when he catches sight of Mickey. He’s running closer, looking worried and confused and Ian should have known Mickey would be here somewhere getting himself into panic mode.

Behind him, there’s another Mickey, a younger, dirtier, slightly drunk Mickey if what Ian is seeing is correct.

He pulls up short at the sight of them, but Ian doesn’t care. He crashes forwards, into Mickey, into _his_ Mickey and pulls him closer, draws him in.

“What did you do?” Mickey asks, scowling even as Ian ducks in to kiss him.

“Why is this my fault?”

“It’s always your fault,” Mickey mutters.

“I don’t know, I’m just going with it,” Ian admits. “I’m not sure what’s real, but I know I needed to pull this guy’s head out of his ass.”

He jerks his thumb over his shoulder at where the Other Ian is standing, eyes flitting between them and the Other Mickey.

“I know, right,” Mickey scoffs. “Idiots think there’s a world we wouldn’t work in.”

Ian grins. “Aww, Mick, you calling us soulmates?”

“I’m saying we are what we are,” Mickey replies, smacking his chest none too lightly. “And what we are is together.” He grabs the back of Ian’s head roughly and kisses him quick and dirty, the worry he’s probably been feeling since they got here bleeding through slightly. “Told you before, only bad shit happens when we’re apart.”

Ian nods, “I know.”

He looks over at the Other Ian, moving in halted steps closer to the Other Mickey. He thinks they’re both starting to get it judging by the looks on their faces. He thinks this must have helped somehow, to see how Mickey and he fold together, fit together so seamlessly. How they could be if they just bucked the fuck up and admitted their faults, admitted where they went wrong and worked from it.

“Find your missing pieces,” he says to the Other Ian, meeting his eyes briefly. “I think you know where they are.”

He sees the Other Ian nod and he only just has time to hear the soft mutter of, “ _Hey Mick_ ,” but not whatever reply may come next because before he knows it he’s gone. He’s gone and he’s waking up, like slipping out of a hot bath into freezing winter air.

He doesn’t know what happened and he doesn’t know why he got out, but a part of him is glad he did. You always have to leave eventually.

“What’s wrong” Mickey asks when Ian jolts upright, gasping like he’s finally broken through the surface of the deepest sea.

He turns, reaches out across the mattress and relaxes when his fingers find flesh.

“I dreamed we were broken,” he says, blinking at Mickey through the dark. “It’s okay though, I fixed us.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't have plans to write another chapter, but it just happened. I would have posted it as a separate work, but as it was pointed out to me by a lovely new friend I've made, it would have interrupted the flow of the series. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!! Sorry it's been a while! I've had so much work but after the 21st I'm home free!!

Ian’s head is throbbing, which isn’t an unusual thing, but he’s stuck in this weird limbo where he’s not quite sure if he was waking up from being asleep, or just blinking himself out of a daze.

It doesn’t feel like a psychotic break. It doesn’t feel like the pills aren’t doing their job.

He’s still tired and as annoyed as he always feels recently. But he can’t shake the conversation rattling around his brain.

A conversation he had with… himself (?) apparently.

He can’t shake the words, “He’s Mickey. And I’m Ian. We’re always going to be pulled back together. He’ll always come back to me.” It resonates with something too far down inside of him something he was supposed to have squashed already. It’s a part of him he can’t listen to anymore, because what good does it do him?

He can’t shake the image of Mickey running down the street, of the other Ian rushing forwards to meet him. Of them crashing together and kissing, right there without a care in the world.

_“Find your missing pieces.”_

He’s not broken, but Ian’s starting to realise maybe that doesn’t mean he has to be completely whole either. He’s allowed to want someone to help him. He’s allowed to want Mickey.

He’s allowed to miss him.

Because _fuck_ does he miss him.

Mickey made everything easier. Getting mad or annoyed at him for stuff, for making him take his meds and badgering him about everything, it was an annoyance, but it was a distraction. And it was one he had liked.

He’d like that Mickey had cared that much. He’d only ever wanted Mickey to care.

He’d only ever wanted Mickey to admit they meant something, to admit he loved him.

And Mickey had. Ian had just fucked that moment up. The moment he’d been waiting for for so long.

Ian rolls of the couch, hand pressing against the back to steady himself. Fiona looks up at him, concern written all over her face. He doesn’t bother making any sort of excuse. He doesn’t even bother grabbing a coat.

He doesn’t have time, he needs to do this before he changes his mind or talks himself out of it.

It doesn’t make sense, but he doesn’t think it matters. It’s nice to think that somewhere there’s another Ian and Mickey and that they can work there too. It’s nice to think that maybe in some way they’re meant to be like that.

Or maybe they’re not.

He remembers Fiona saying to him once, “Everything worth it isn’t easy.”

And Ian doesn’t want the easy. Nothing with Mickey has been easy so far and he doesn’t want it to suddenly be. It’s why he wanted his Southside thug back, before it all went seriously wrong. He wanted the Mickey that was willing to burn everything else to the ground just to have another second together. He didn’t want the Mickey that would snuff out the flame.

He didn’t want safe, he wanted reckless. He wanted passion. He wanted crazy, because that was what he was. That was what he had always been, bi-polar or not. He was the idiot kid to go up against a Milkovich with a tyre-iron.

And Mickey was the brand of crazy to get shot in the ass over a grandfather clock, to hump a car and scream about getting fucked where anyone could hear.

They were both fucked up enough, but maybe that was what the other Ian had been trying to tell him. They were both messed up, but they were better together. They always had been. They were each other’s missing pieces, because they were both a part of the same puzzle.

Ian didn’t mind being broken that way.

Maybe it didn’t even make sense, any of this. But he didn’t need it to. He just needed Mickey. He needed another chance, even if he didn’t deserve one.

He’s shivering by the time he tracks Mickey down to the Alibi and the gust of warm air that hits him is one of the best things he’s felt in a long time. Seeing Mickey hunched over by the bar is simultaneously on of the best and worst things that he’s seen.

He looks like shit, hair slicked back and greasy, fingers wrapped around a shot glass. Ian watches him toss the shot back before he slides into the seat beside him.

He feels like the whole bar is watching him, watching them, but honestly it’s probably only V.

Her hawk-eyed stare is turned on him the moment he sits down and she slowly pushes over a half pint of beer that they both know she’ll run to Fiona to tell about if he touches. He wasn’t going to touch it though, he has bigger fish to fry.

A fish who is freezing up next to Ian.

Where their arms brush it’s electric and Ian’s surprised Mickey doesn’t jerk away.

“I had a weird dream,” he says, because it’s the only way he can think to begin this conversation.

Mickey snorts into the beer he swipes from in front of Ian. “You want me to rub you’re fucking back or something?”

He lets that one slide, doesn’t even know if Mickey’s aware it didn’t completely make sense. He can tell Mickey’s at that stage of drunk where he’s going to start mixing his metaphors regardless.

“Made me realise I fucked up,” he says.

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Mickey’s eyebrows starting to climb. “So what, you thought you could just sit down next to me and I’d come crawling back?”

His lip curls and Ian knows this is the moment where he could lose it all forever. This is the moment he can’t fuck up, because it’s the cliff’s edge and there’s no going back.

“Do you want to know what my dream told me?” Ian asks, ploughing right on without giving Mickey a chance to say anything. “It made me see that there isn’t a universe where you won’t be the best thing to ever happen to me.”

A part of him expects Mickey to just scoff, but he doesn’t.

He turns to look at Ian finally, their eyes meeting across what’s only a foot of space, but feels like a whole chasm of memories and wasting seconds.

“Give me one more chance,” he says quietly, fingers twitching to reach out for Mickey’s. He knows they’re not there yet though, won’t be for a long time maybe. “One more chance to be the best thing to happen to you.”

Mickey’s fingers flutter around the glass in his hand and he sucks his bottom lip into his mouth briefly, in that way that always makes Ian want to kiss him. He used to tell himself that if he ever got the opportunity to finally start kissing Mickey in public, he wouldn’t do anything to ruin it.

But he did, didn’t he?

He’s going to find a way to pay for that mistake.

“Okay,” Mickey says slowly.

He sounds like he feels, tired and stressed and like utter shit, but for just a split second, full of hope too. He sounds like there’s possibilities for them, finally. And with one word, there actually is.

 

*****

 

In another world, another life, in another _whateverthisis_ , Mickey shifts closer to Ian on their mattress.

“You’re the worst thing to ever happen to me,” he says softly, fingers dancing across the freckles on Ian’s cheekbone. His smile gives the game away, but Ian finds himself frowning anyway.

“Why?” he asks.

“Because you gave me so much to lose,” he says.

It’s a moment of truth sharp enough to cut anything. And it cuts Ian in the deepest places, the places that only Mickey knows how to reach.

Ian pulls him closer, close enough that their noses brush and he can taste Mickey’s toothpaste with each inhale. “Never,” he swears before he kisses him. “Never.”

Not in any world for long.

**Author's Note:**

> I am [themintsauce](http://themintsauce.tumblr.com) on tumblr!
> 
> @BethCottrell


End file.
